The discovery of the megalosaurus near Minchinhampton happened years before the word ‘dinosaur’ had even been coined.

Clearly the megalosaurus in the opening passage of Bleak House is a flight of hyperbolic fancy (inspired, I would guess, by the papier-mâché dinosaurs constructed for the Crystal Palace Exhibition, a couple of years earlier).

'Iguanodons grew to five metres tall, while megalosauruses grew even taller, to eight metres,’ she said.

Derivatives

megalosaurian

Although there was some turnover during that time, with more advanced families and genera replacing earlier ones, the basic ‘big three’ of sauropods, stegosaurs, and theropods (the latter themselves being divided into ceratosaurian, megalosaurian and allosaurian) remained throughout, with Camptosaurid ornithopods only emerging towards the end.

In the splendid collection of Megalosaurian remains in the possession of Mr. James Parker, of Oxford, which I had the good fortune to see a few weeks ago, I recognised the astragalus of that reptile, which, as I had already divined from the structure of the tibia, is altogether like the corresponding bone in Poikilopleuron.

In 1856, Deinodon horridus, from the Judith River Beds of Montana, was securely founded by Leidy on Megalosaurian teeth, and those first mentioned and first figured in Leidy's original description and memoir on the Judith River Vertebrates must be regarded as valid types.